


like the feeling of alabaster and daffodil

by Jaybird_Wings



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Minor Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone), Spoilers for Episode: e067-069 Story and Song Parts 1-3, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 17:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18393137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaybird_Wings/pseuds/Jaybird_Wings
Summary: When Istus was a young goddess she thought fate was more powerful than death.





	like the feeling of alabaster and daffodil

Fate and death are tightly wound things, and since the first moment of her first divine breath, Istus has known the Raven Queen.

Death does not run its course through what fate chooses. Those fated for greatness can die too young to accomplish what can be done. Istus knits, and she sees the future. Not in the sense where she knows the answers, but she knows the colors. The colors of wool to pick and in what patterns, it’s something she still doesn’t know how to explain.

She doesn’t know how to say that a person is indigo and dark maroon in a way that makes sense. The future is one path and she doesn’t dictate it, she just knits it.

In the beginning, there was a mush of dimensions and life hardly existed. Barely thrived.But the people always know of death, and the Raven Queen formed her ever-changing empire. Even without a name, death is something everyone prays to, for whatever reason.

Istus hears it too, the clicking of knitting needles like sepia and people asking what is their fate, what will happen, does it get better than this? She can send a message through a red-toned night sky or a brilliant blooming flower shaded neons of yellow. But it’s not a language anyone ever understands.

When she was a younger goddess, she thought fate was stronger than death. She gave heroes her boons to overcome great horrors, say how strongly they were tied to their fate. But heroes still died. She wanted to knit her masterpiece of colors.

Pan tries asking how she knows what to knit, eons ago. The words are impossible to find and she just keeps stumbling and stumbling until all she is repeating are colors.

“Malachite. A strip of Vermillion. Lots of fallow. Faint Aquamarine.” The pantheon learns not to ask again.

When she thinks the mortals understand what just one color means, they get another completely wrong and she gets angry.

People revere fate, but they don’t repeat her name like they do the Raven’ Queen. Temples spring up and she acquires loyal followers. She gets her great heroes and her faceless nobodies, all dead and ebony, to pass by and some become reapers. Every single thing that died fears Istus, but they don’t say her name.

The pantheon meets to celebrate coming of a new god, one she doesn’t really remember for his obscurity, but she remembers the Raven Queen.

She walked down the steps, late to the party. She wore a long black gown, trailing behind her feet. Her great, obsidian wings spanned out, and a large crown of black jewels glinted against the pristine opal ballroom. She looked like a message of the end of times, like a silent breath of doom, like onyx, charcoal, and sage.

Istus knows she is grand, but in that moment, she thinks she understands why mortals pray. It’s like amber, apple, and coral.

She learns to cool her burning merlot heart and calms down to a softer cerulean. The times roll by, and she doesn’t need temples when she knows she is during her work and doing it right. As people grow, the other deities are swamped with more duties and responsibilities, she stays content.

Well, not content. She wants to catch glimpses of her, but with more mortals than ever, her reapers deal with such matters as death.

Sometimes she misses the beginning. She was simple and the world wasn’t contrasting so much. Bright fuchsia against vibrant marigold, the world didn’t look like that back then. She saw the Raven Queen, and she didn’t seem so far away. Istus spoke to her with ease, but now they have their own duties to follow.

As she knits, seven strands of strong crimson threads force their way into her mural. She doesn’t know where they came from, or why the tragedy of ash and rust colors follow them. She feels sad. She knows how to say that without including the cacophony of colors. They’re sad, the seven red strands fading into other colors as they grow apart.

One thread, now full of hazelnut brown, squash orange, and the reds of berries. Cut through with casting amethyst and transmuting it to lapis. She knits, and it wraps around an onyx thread- a reaper.

This elf has a great fate, one that might even affect the survival of the planes. And he- he and the reaper spark magenta. What’s the word, the word, it’s the way she feels she sees the Raven Queen.

Magenta.

After the escape of souls, and subsequent return of order, she visits with a nervous, magenta heart.

“The world is coming to crazy times.” Raven Queen sighs, like lilac and rose. Eyes like ruby and honey, hidden beneath a dark veil but shining all the same.

“You know, you should be careful. Seven threads of fate are going to decide everything.”

How so, the goddess of death asks. Istus doesn’t know how to answer. All that comes to her vocabulary are the colors, once again.

“The event, like seafoam and walnut. There’s going to be flaxen and lemon. I mean- that made no sense, I’m sorry.”

The words are hard to find, and that’s a fate heavy in her hands while she knits. The knowledge she alone has, existing in the tapestry she knits.

“No worries, but if you can please, do tell me where my dear reaper Kravitz is going to end up in all of this. I’ve seen the cycles of life and death, I know when someone is woven into your picture. You’ve had him there and he died too young to fulfill it, but he’s going to be important, right?”

“You already know the answer.” Are the words Istus finds.

“I guess, what I mean to say- will he be alright?”

Istus sees the darkness that will devour. There will be something ravenous for the light of this world, and she sees the colors fade as he’s caught inside of it.

The words fail to come, and not for the failure of the right phrasing. She has all the words ready behind her mouth, living in her throat, but she can’t say.

“We may all be doomed, dear.”

In the very beginning, words were harder for her. She didn’t speak the languages the others spoke, she couldn’t even form the names of the symphony of color she saw. Back then she didn’t have her needles and thread, even, but just some string she held tightly between her fingers.

She did learn how to commune with others of the pantheon eventually but found their lack of foresight hard to deal with. They were all so absorbed with the now when she knew how her tapestry would end. She could see everything she needed to get done, and it was a lot.

Back then, she knitted constantly, fervently, trying to beat time. But as she got ahead, things went wrong and she’d had to undo decades of decrees to fix it. She was going to make something perfect, but all the gods didn’t understand that.

She made heroes, and she decided what they’d do. But then they died.

It made her sadder than anything the deep colbalts, emeralds, and violets the ocean shifted in. She never knew how to account for death.

As the dimension of the gods is swallowed by a horde of crying hickory, caramel, and sable, she prays the seven strands, the threads, the birds don’t leave in the ship, that a needle doesn’t take them of the story right at the last moment. She holds Raven Queen’s hand without thinking.

“I used to fear you thought lesser of me since all my work could be undone by you.” She admits.

“I used to fear you thought lesser of me because all I could do was organize chess pieces on a game that has already been won and defeated. Your tapestry of fate, your drapery of decrees, your colors are amazing. You can- you are amazing, Istus.”

The black flood fills the air.

But her seven birds don’t leave them, don’t abandon the tapestry that they have become integral to, and they save the planes instead.

“Istus!” The goddess of death says her name like its alabaster and daffodil.

“Raven Queen.” She says in magenta and leans to Raven Queen to kiss her.


End file.
